


The Renegade: Citadel

by wonderwhatthisbuttondoes



Series: The Renegade [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alpha/Omega, Canon Gay Relationship, Established Relationship, M/M, Mass Effect 3: Citadel, Omega Verse, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 01:21:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderwhatthisbuttondoes/pseuds/wonderwhatthisbuttondoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Commander Shepard has better things to do than wonder when one of his enemies will use the fact that he's an Omega against him, and he decides that going through a heat cycle during his shore-leave on the Citadel is the best way to ensure that won't happen.<br/>As usual, Kaidan thinks Shepard's plan is way too dangerous... </p><p>(My take on how the Citadel DLC would have gone if 'Omega' had been one of the character-creation options for Shepard.  Some scenes are new, others have simply been adapted from the way they went in-game to reflect this change.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Renegade: Citadel

**Author's Note:**

> There is no 'Knotting Implied' tag, or I would have used it.  
> 

 

“I need your help with something,” Shepard began, flatly.  He might have said, ‘I need you to take over that battery up on the ridge-’ in much the same tone, but Kaidan still sensed that something was off.

“What is it?”  he asked.

“A time bomb.  Or- ...it could be,” Shepard qualified, breaking eye contact.

Kaidan’s suddenly-alert look faded to deeply concerned interest, and he waited for the other man to continue..

“Okay, this is harder than I thought,”  Shepard admitted with a slight laugh.

Kaidan put a hand on his Commander’s shoulder, and left it there.

“Start at the beginning.  Or- maybe try listing the arguments for and against?”  he suggested.

“You know I’m an Omega.”

“Yes… but I also know what you’d rather be, and I’m still behind you on that one hundred percent,”  Kaidan assured him.

“Well… Cerberus had other plans,”  Shepard said, bluntly.

“...I know.”

“Yeah.  ...Anyway, their ‘restoration’ left me with a tactical weakness I can no longer afford.  The whole time we were on that last mission, all I could think was- -what if one of these idiots pulls a perfectly normal double-cross, gets lucky, and just throws me in a cell for a week?  Can you imagine?  -With THAT crowd…?”

“You’re right to be frightened.  Those guys were-”  Kaidan began, disgustedly.

“I’M NOT- ...look.  Kaidan.  My point is, I can’t do this.  I have a million other things to focus on right now, and a goddamn pill shouldn’t be one of them.  I need to know that whatever happens, my mind will still be my own, and my body won’t turn on me.”

“Then you should talk to Dr. Chakwas.”  Kaidan agreed seriously,  “-I’ll go with you.”

“There’s no time,”  Shepard shook his head, “-it’s a pretty invasive procedure.  I might not be healed before we have to go back out again.”  

...Maybe that was a lie and maybe it wasn’t, but there was some shadow in Shepard’s eyes as he explained this.  Kaidan realized where the conversation was going and just stared at him, at first too angry to speak.

“Do you have a death wish?” he demanded, finally.

“I trust you,”  -this time, Shepard’s eyes didn’t waver.

“Shepard, I’m a _Biotic Sentinel_.  Trustworthiness has nothing to do with it.  I’m glad you asked me- really I- I am, but- -during a heat, _I’d kill you_.”

“Let me explain something,”  Shepard leaned his forearms on the railing, and looked out over the city below.  “-I’ve fought this my whole life, and won.  I never questioned my decision to be surgically assigned as a Beta, and I’ve only ever regretted it once… that was with you inside me, the night before we hit Ilos.  I want you that much, Kaidan.  ...And from what I understand of Alphas, that’s exactly why I’d be safe,”  he finished, looking over with a smile.

Kaidan rubbed his forehead one-handed, eyes shut.

“Tell me you haven’t stopped taking suppressants already.”

“This morning.”

“DAMMIT, Shepard!” he snapped.

“I’m doing this.  I want it to be with you, but there’s too much at stake here, and it has to be _someone_.  Think it over.”

“WHO?”  Kaidan demanded.

“I haven’t decided yet.  It’s a big station.  ...And,” he added less coldly, “-Liara said she could find somebody I wouldn’t have to see again.”

It was the best, and worst, promise Kaidan had ever heard.  It stole the air from his lungs, and left him feeling warm at the same time.  However this went down, Shepard wanted to stay with him.  Kaidan leaned an elbow on the railing as well, and studied the fingers of his gloved right hand, shimmering blue.

“...There are only four biotic Alphas in the galaxy, you know.”

“I _know_ ,”  -clearly, Shepard didn’t find this a deterrent.

“One is in jail, Jack’s BEEN to jail, and if Conatex hadn’t been doing some serious ass-covering, I would be too.”

“You weren’t the one who hurt Rana,”  Shepard pointed out.

“No,”  Kaidan agreed a little too calmly, “-after she saw what I did to Vernus, she never gave me the chance.  And neither should you.”

“So that’s what this is about.  I’m not a teenage girl, Kaidan.”

“No, but most of your bones break almost as easily,”  Kaidan reminded him.

They stood in silence for a moment.

“I should go,”  Shepard decided, standing back from the railing.

“Yeah, you should,”  Kaidan couldn’t look at him.

 

* * *

 

It really was too bad about the sushi restaurant.  The sight of Shepard shooting his own clone in the face when the man’s fingers had closed around his wrist instead of the hand he was offering, that was another thing Kaidan wished he could erase, but at long last...

 

* * *

 

Garrus watched his two companions in the elevator, uneasily.  The recent fight in the docking bay had left Shepard with a kind of restless energy, and he couldn’t stay still.  He checked the settings on one of his rifles, changed one, and put it back.  He rolled his neck in a stretch, and sighed, watching the floors passing by outside the elevator impatiently.

Kaidan was saying absolutely nothing, but the tense lines of his body spoke for him.  So did the way he kept staring hungrily at Shepard.  

All things being equal, Garrus knew what to expect from Shepard some time in the next twenty four hours, but a human Alpha who was an otherwise sane and considerate man… that was an unknown quantity.  Garrus knew more than most Turians about the mating complexities of Humans- -he hadn’t been able to avoid it, given his work with C-Sec- -and the cleanup from one of those incidents was part of the reason he’d agreed to help Shepard the last time…

He had to admit though, he never wanted to strap the Commander down and listen to him scream through a gag for that long again.

“Just… so you know,”  Garrus told them carefully, “-you should get off the street soon.  You’re starting to react to each other.”

Kaidan turned and glared at him coldly, then looked away with a expression of deep pain.  Garrus looked to Shepard, surprised.  Shepard shook his head once, his face serious.  Garrus lowered his head a few degrees.

“...Then you’d better call Liara,”  he advised,  “-I assume you’ve met-”

“Yeah, but-”  Shepard began.  There was a sudden crash, as Kaidan’s armored fist met the elevator wall.  A slight squeal of dented metal-on-metal followed them for the rest of the ride.  Kaidan stopped moving.  He took a breath, and let the shimmer of blue around himself fade.  Made his fingers uncurl by an act of pure will, and slumped back against the side of the elevator, head down.  “-Not here,”  Shepard finished, unnecessarily.

“...Riiight,”  Garrus agreed.

 

* * *

 

He shouldn’t have come up.  Kaidan KNEW that, but somehow he wanted this.  Wanted a man he would hopefully never know to smell his scent in this place, and understand without the least chance for confusion, that he wouldn’t be able to stay there.  That Shepard…

God, he’d forgotten how much walking away _hurt._

From time to time, okay, he’d crossed paths an indiscrete Omega, or a couple who just hadn’t made it home, but that was different.  Wasn’t like this…

Rana had been, but he’d known her.  Admired her.  Had time to… he couldn’t put it into words, but maybe it ran along the same lines as his attraction to people in general-  -something deeper, with someone he already cared about.

He wasn’t seventeen this time, he KNEW what-

 

“Kaidan,”  Garrus was standing next to him, and Kaidan had the sudden awareness that he had NO idea how long the other man had been there- “-I’m not a Human, but I’ve seen this drama play out a couple of times, and… if you care about Shepard at all, which it’s obvious you do, you’ll leave right now, or you’ll stay.”

“...You’ve seen this play out?”  Kaidan repeated.

“C-Sec,” Garrus cut his suspicions off, sidestepping the whole _‘that time I tied up Shepard-'’_ thing.  ...Which would probably get him put through a wall at this point, if Garrus was any judge.

Kaidan nodded once.

“So, you’re… still here,”  Garrus observed, after a pause.  Kaidan uncrossed his arms self-consciously, and sighed.

“He’s upstairs because he’s trying to LET me leave, isn’t he.”

“How should I know?”  Garrus demanded, annoyed, “-what I DO know is, unless you leave or go up there and assure Shepard you’re not going to leave soon, there will be another Human Alpha showing up at this apartment, and you’ll be up on murder charges, and _so help me_ -”

“Garrus, I want to stay, but I’d kill him.”

“You keep saying that Kaidan, but there’s only BEEN one documented case of a biotic Human Alpha killing someone in bed at all, and unless you know of more-”

“I fought him when we were younger,”  Kaidan blurted out,  “-I wiped the deck with that guy, and a few years later he- he-”

“Listen to yourself,”  Garrus advised softly, ”-listen to what makes you angry, and why.  And if you still think you’re a danger to Shepard then GET.  THE HELL.  OUT.”

Kaidan’s eyes flashed, blue biotic field hazing over something closer to faceted brass than his usual brown.

“I think _you_ should go,”  he decided.

“GREAT,”  Garrus was already making purposefully for the door,  “-I’ll call Liara, don’t do anything Jack wouldn’t do, and I’ll see you both in a few days.”

 

* * *

 

Kaidan locked the door, and rested his forehead against it for a moment.  

Shepard was his.

He’d failed.

He’d succeeded.

He wasn’t a monster like Thomas.

Probably.

Shepard.  Upstairs… somewhere…  Kaidan’s boots made surprisingly little noise as he searched, but Shepard found him first, and tackled him straight into a closet door, which gave in a little with a sharp, splintering crack.

Shepard.  On his lips, and in his lungs, filling his hands and his vision, and _burning_ hot, and-

“Took you fucking long enough,”  Shepard growled,  “-I thought- I thought I--”  his voice failed him, and the look of mingled relief and lingering uncertainty on his face was raw.

Kaidan kissed him, firmly.

“Shh,”  Kaidan told him, when they could speak again.

“-Get your fucking armor off,”  Shepard countered impatiently, oblivious of the repetition,  “- _c’mon_ -”  he glanced down, frowning for a moment, “...god that’s armor’s gotta be uncomfortable the way you’re built.”

“You have no idea, but it does help me stay focused-” Kaidan began, hands quickly undoing the buckles and catches of his armor from muscle memory.

“Focus on this,” Shepard said with a slight smirk, and started undoing his own belt.

 

* * *

 

Kaidan’s armor, and most of the clothes, went.  Shepard helped, which did as much to hinder the process as speed it up, and towards the end Kaidan just immobilized him for a moment to finish.  He did it without thinking, because he could, and because something was just off about letting Shepard do too many things for him just then.  Reaching through the field as he dissolved it, Kaidan pulled his Commander in close against his chest, and held him there, safe.  It sounded strange even in his own head, but they had covered far too much ground together for it to matter.  Shepard had been talking before.  A lot of ‘I need you’ and ‘will you fucking please hurry up-’, but now he was silent, pupils blown, the slight tremble in his hands that Kaidan hadn’t noticed until it stopped, still.  Kaidan ran a hand over Shepard’s short-cropped hair, with the warmth of his scalp beneath and down the back of his neck.  He ran his other hand along Shepard’s back, following the clean, hard definition of his shoulders down into the smoother, leaner planes below.  He could feel the slight catch of sweat against his palm, the alternate warmth and cool of the other man’s breathing against  the base of his neck, as he nuzzled there.

Shepard was _his_.  

The memory of having not known that, not understood that, felt foreign.  Kaidan touched him, and his fingers came away wet.  Ice-blue eyes locked with his, feverish.  Putting a hand under Shepard’s left hip, Kaidan lifted him, and used his free hand to guide their bodies together.  Shepard was holding onto Kaidan’s shoulders firmly, his legs wrapped around his waist, but he sank down where those strong, careful hands were telling him to go, and down, onto a feeling that stopped his breath, and sent a thin thread of panic shooting through him, until his back arched, and something lined up that hadn’t a moment ago, and-

“Ah-!”  his fingers dug into the muscles of Kaidan’s back, hard.

Overwhelming.  Solid.  Heartbeat.  .. _.Home._

Shepard relaxed, and rested his forehead against the top of Kaidan’s hair while he caught his breath, already wanting to move...

 

* * *

 

Time blurred together.  Shepard found his voice again… and lost it in the third round.  They destroyed the bed, and most of the energy bars that had been in the pockets of Kaidan’s armor.  Kaidan discovered a few new places Shepard was ticklish.  Shepard woke up from having blacked out, and found that he could reach up with a hand that shimmered softly blue, and touch the ceiling not three feet away. They caught a nap somewhere in the middle, and Kaidan decided that meant it was time to start over.  

 

* * *

 

Slowly, like the heat of the sun as it leaves a stone, Shepard’s face began to cool down again.  His thoughts were scattered, but he left them where they were.  Kaidan was wrapped about him, his face buried against the side of Shepard’s neck.  They were still locked together deep inside, and it felt good.  Kaidan called it ‘docking’, which… was probably one of the sweeter things Shepard had ever heard, considering.  ...Kaidan had had too much time alone to think about things like that before they’d met, he knew, but it was still nice.

Nice, hell, this was… dangerous.  Especially here at the end, with both of them feeling good and loose, the delicious ache of how Kaidan filled him was…

 _Turning his brain to jello_ , Shepard admitted privately, but it felt damned good.  -Being held like this felt pretty fantastic too.

Kaidan exhaled against the back of his neck, and it sent a shot through Shepard’s whole over-fired nervous system.  He shivered, hard.  Kaidan caught his breath as Shepard squeezed around him, and groaned softly.

“That was one hell of an aftershock,”  he acknowledged, and kissed Shepard’s shoulder.

“...Yeah,”  Shepard agreed, in a voice that sounded rough in his own ears.  The pressure inside him was less, now.  Kaidan stroked his side for a while, then thumbed over what Shepard knew was a freckle on his forearm, and hugged him tightly.  Shepard put his arms over Kaidan’s around his chest, and squeezed back, eyes shut.

 

* * *

 

“I didn’t know you knew how to cook,”   Shepard said, leaning heavily on the counter at Kaidan’s elbow, but watching him with interest.

“Classes at Jump-Zero, believe it or not.  Young biotics who can’t cook for themselves risk starving,” Kaidan said, in that way that meant there was more to the story but he liked this version better.  Shepard liked the way his worn gray t-shirt fit Kaidan.

“Did you pass?” he asked, then glanced over into one of the pans, “-you’re burning the garlic.”

“Heh.  Sorry.  Guess I’m still tired,”  Kaidan looked over at him sidelong as he rescued the pan.

“I wonder why...” Shepard said, thoughtfully.

Kaidan just laughed.  Shepard moved closer, and put an arm around his shoulders.  He liked the closeness, and it was fun keeping the Major off-balance.

“So?”  Kaidan prompted, seeing the attention-request for what it was.

Shepard glanced down into the pan, critically.

“We have hot sauce, right?”

“Go easy on it,”  Kaidan advised with a smile, and kissed the corner of Shepard’s jaw.

 

* * *

 

Shepard kicked back on the couch with a happy sigh, and stretched, yawning.  Kaidan joined him, catching the yawn as he sat down.  He put an arm around Shepard, and the Commander leaned into his touch, head against Kaidan’s shoulder.  Across the room from them, the fire crackled.

“...I think I’m gonna fall asleep again,”  Shepard admitted, amused at himself.

“I’m not going anywhere,”  Kaidan promised.  Shepard looked up at him for a long moment, thoughtful.

“I believe you,”  he said, quietly.  Kaidan kissed him.  Shepard settled back in against Kaidan’s side, and shut his eyes.  His omni-tool beeped.  Shepard sat up, and fumbled the interface open.  He typed in a simple three-digit code, and shut the omni-tool off again.

“What was that?”  Kaidan asked.

“That was the code for ‘I’m fine, but don’t call me yet’,” Shepard replied.

“You set that up with Garrus-?”

“Liara, actually.”

“...Heh.  So you _were_ listening.”

“Liara insisted.  I knew you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“...How?”  Kaidan wanted to know.  He hadn’t quite forgiven Shepard for forcing the timing on this thing, but he was actively looking for reasons why he should.

Shepard shrugged, and tucked his head in against Kaidan’s chest.

“You’re my Alpha.  And more to the point, you’re not a complete dick.”

Kaidan made a slight choking noise.

“...Okay, I have to know.  Was the other Alpha even real?”  Kaidan asked.

“Yeah.  Nice guy, works on a science vessel.  -You scared the shit out of me, I thought I was actually gonna to have to call him.”

Kaidan’s hand tightened slightly around his upper arm.

“No.”

Shepard smiled, and shut his eyes again.

 

* * *

 

Lost in thought somewhere between the hypnotic backbeat of the bar and the remembered warmth of the hot tub he’d shared a few hours earlier, Shepard didn’t notice Wrex’s approach until the Krogan’s shadow actually fell across him.

“Wrex?  What are you doin’ here?”  he asked, looking over.  Wrex gave a deep, weary groan, and smashed his forehead-crest lightly onto the bar-counter, rattling glasses.

“Escaping.  Ever since we cured the Genophage, it’s been nothing but work.”

Shepard leaned an elbow on the bar, and scratched the back of his neck with his other hand.  The medigel there was peeling a little.

“The council?”  he guessed.

“BAH!  Not those pyjak shit-slingers, no, it’s the… it’s the _females_ , Shepard,”  Wrex explained, lowering his voice meaningfully,  “-Now that they’re fertile again… Uggggh-”  the Krogan’s armored head met the counter for a second decisive time-  “-I haven’t slept in… I don’t know how long.”  

The Asari bartender glided over to them.

“Can I get you two anything?”  She asked, businesslike.

“Two more drinks,”  Wrex ground out without raising his head, “-and another bag of ice.”

Shepard rested his chin in his hand, and considered his friend.  He tried not to smile, and for the moment at least, succeeded.

“I would’ve thought you’d be enjoying the… perks of Krogan fertility,”  he ventured.

“Enjoying it?”  Wrex protested, “-There’s a line of females outside my dwelling right now!  Stretches on for as far as you can see.  I had to sneak out my own bathroom window!”  The Krogan hunched his shoulders, and moved his massive head forwards like an offended bird of prey.  “-And even then I was cornered by two more females on the ride from Tuchanka.”

“Now if you were human,”  Shepard pointed out before he could stop himself, “-They’d have been fighting each other for the privilege.”

“I TRIED THAT,” Wrex groaned, “-but Bakara told on me!”

 _“Ouch_. _”_

“...I’m telling you Shepard, I’m in no shape to fight Reapers,”  Wrex confessed, setting his head down on the counter for a third time.

Two drinks slid expertly across the bar, and Shepard looked down at them.  He hadn’t been drinking anything yet.

“Here are your drinks,”  the bartender said flatly, “...and a bag of ice.”

Wrex eyed the bag from bar-top level, and looked pointedly at Shepard.  Shepard looked silently at the bag, and then at Wrex, with an expression that was dangerously close to compassion.  Shepard turned around.  Wrex took up the ice, and stuffed it somewhere he found useful.

“HMRRRR… and I thought Morden’s procedure was painful,” he said, with a short, dark laugh, “-ah, well.”

Shepard stretched his neck a little, and stepped back up to the bar to stand beside his friend.

 

His head apparently clearing from the use of the ice, Wrex looked Shepard up and down, shrewdly.

“So what’s your excuse?”  he rumbled.

“...I did a heat cycle,”  Shepard replied, with a small and very relaxed smile.

“Shiiit, Shepard.  You look like you just took on a battalion.”

“I’ll tell Kaidan you said that.”  Shepard smirked.

“HAH!”  Wrex’s three-fingered hand hit the table triumphantly, making their glasses jump.  “I hoped that one would find his quad someday,” -the ice, wherever it was, gave a slight crunch as the Krogan shifted on his feet.

“Totally worth the wait,”  Shepard asserted, swirling the dark liquid in his glass once and setting it down.  “You know uh, when I finally woke up... he made me steak and beer.”

“You are gonna have a lotta kids,”  Wrex predicted, in an amused rumble.

“Not while the Reapers are still out there,”  Shepard said, flatly.  “-And,” he added, looking over at the Krogan sidelong, “-you should talk, _father of Tuchanka._ ”

“Urrghhhhhh…”  Wrex groaned, and his armor-plated head hit the bar with an especially loud rattle of glassware.  The bartender looked back at the pair with annoyance, hand on her hip.

Shepard took a quiet breath, and downed his drink in one shot without further hesitation.  He set the glass back empty, and swallowed hard.  The bartender raised an eyebrow at him questioningly.  Shepard nodded, and she refilled his glass.

“-Thanks,”  he muttered.  She moved off.

Wrex raised his head, catching the end of this exchange, but didn’t comment.

“...We sure have been through it, haven’t we,”  he said with a low laugh, instead.

“Still goin’ through it,”  Shepard agreed.

“Hahah, true.  Well, here’s to us!”  Wrex said, raising his glass,  “-And to going through it.”

“The Reapers don’t know what they’re fucking with,” Shepard agreed, and both men drank.

The Human made a slight face as he set his glass down, feeling the sharp warmth of the additional whiskey spreading outwards from his stomach.  His head swam for a moment, and it felt good.

“Korbal!”  Wrex shouted, and clacked his thick-sided glass down empty.  

Shepard looked over at him.

“-It means, victory or death.  Roughly,”  Wrex explained, with a neck-only shrug.

“Well I’ve got better things to do than die,”  Shepard said with a tight, wolfish look, “-and you Wrex, you can’t die, you’ve got a family now.  A really… big… family.”

“AHHHHH-!”  the Krogan bellowed, as his head came crashing down onto the bar-top once again, “-MORE ICE!”

 

* * *

 

Tali was drunk again, but the others in the kitchen seemed to have her well in hand.  From around the corner in the living room, Shepard heard the distinct sound of Grunt’s derisive laughter.

“I told you already,” the young Krogan bellowed at the viewscreen by the door  “GET LOST!”

His Crew.  Loosening up around him, and exploring each other.  Jack and Miranda would be doing quite a lot of that by the end of the night if Shepard was any judge…

Elsewhere, Cortez and Javik were giving Joker shit about not having a sidearm, and Shepard had to agree.  It wouldn’t be THAT hard to find the pilot an old-style laser-pistol that didn’t have recoil…

Ducking back into the kitchen to snag a sandwich that tasted of meat and olives, the Commander made his way upstairs.

 

* * *

 

“Hey Shepard,” Kaidan greeted him a couple of hours later, putting an arm around his waist and balancing a beer in his other hand.

“Kaidan...”  Shepard replied, smiling just a little.  He wasn’t used to this level of PDA in front of the others, and maybe he never would be, but it felt too good to pull away.

“Need me to do anything?  Food run, change the music, check on ice?”  Kaidan offered.

“I need you to relax, and have a good time,”  Shepard told him, turning within the circle of Kaidan’s arm so that they were face to face.

The room was doing that narrowing thing again.  Just him and Kaidan, and it didn’t make sense, but the music seemed further away too.  Shepard rested a hand on the cross-buckle of Kaidan’s marine utility uniform, but didn’t undo it.  Kaidan looked fondly into his eyes, then murmured in a voice he’d clearly intended to be private but no one else in the room missed,

“...You are my favorite starship.”

Shepard considered this.  Then he confiscated Kaidan’s latest beer, and finished it himself.

“Come on,”  he said, briskly.

 

* * *

 

Shepard stood at the railing, alone.  Outside, the long, sleek hull of the Normandy shone faintly blue and white.  The sight of her washed his mind clear, let him focus again.  It was time to be getting back out there.  Split-toed Turian boots.  EDI’s silent rubber ‘treads’.  Kaidan’s familiar step just behind him.  They were all here, Shepard knew, or someone would be loudly asking where the missing one was.  These people were his crew, the finest he’d ever commanded.  Betas, Alphas, Omagas, male and female aliens, and even one living machine.  Rich backgrounds and streetwise, spacers, and chieftains, and geniuses...  No two of them were the same, and not one of them, Shepard knew, would let him down in the fight that was to come.

It was a hell of a thing, and in the cool, iron-walled quiet of his own thoughts, Shepard admitted that this was probably one of the best moments of his life.  He shut his eyes for a moment, feeling his crew all around him, and enjoyed it.

When he opened them, Kaidan was standing at the railing to his right, looking calm.

“Guess we better get back to it,”  Kaidan sighed.  “-You feeling any better?”

“Still hung over,”  Shepard lied, “-but I’ll be right in a day or two.”

Kaidan saw straight through the lie, nodded understandingly, and left it alone.

“-At least we threw one hell of a party,”  Shepard added, looking out past his ship at the stars beyond, “-probably the last one.”

That horseshit, Kaidan could and would do something about.

“Ah… Shepard, you… you will find a way to win,”  he promised,  “-I know it.  And when you do, I’ll be waiting.”

Shepard took his eyes from the stars and looked, almost hesitantly, at the man beside him.  Kaidan’s intelligent face was clear, and the hard, bluish light falling in through the viewing window brought out the hints of gray that were beginning at the Major’s temples.  He looked… like he might just know what he was talking about.  Like Shepard could let the frantically spinning wheel in his head run down, and just... believe him.

“Yeah,”  Kaidan continued, “-the greatest challenge of my life.  And the greatest reward.”

Reward.  Right.

“...What if all I can do is destroy?”  Shepard whispered, very, very softly.

“I said, I’ll be waiting for you,”  Kaidan reminded him, almost as quietly,  “-and I think you heard me.”

Shepard shut his eyes and swallowed, his face suddenly warm.  He heard the others begin to move off in the direction of the ship, and felt Kaidan’s hand give his elbow a gentle squeeze, before he, too, left the railing.  Shepard opened his eyes, looked lovingly out at his ship through the large viewing window once more, and then jogged off to catch up with the rest of his crew.

**Author's Note:**

> Humans do WHAT when they mate? (or, the rules of the Mass Effect Omegaverse according to me)
> 
> 1) Alpha/Beta/Omega biology applies to Humans only. ...The rest of the galaxy reads about it in 'Fornax', and considers it as weird/alien/kinky as the Asari having only ONE gender.
> 
> 2) Alphas, like Betas and Omegas, can be either male or female. As for what Jack keeps in her pants, I dare you to ask her.
> 
> 3) Human culture got past the Alpha/Omega stigma over a century ago, and it's treated in the same way as being gay or straight is in regular Mass Effect canon: people simply are what the are. That being said, certain unwritten rules like the unlikelihood of an Alpha being trusted with command of a ship before age forty, or that of an Omega being assigned to a ground unit likely to see combat, are still in effect.


End file.
